Requiem (Fan fic)
by Dunno12345
Summary: The way I want the opening of Requiem to go!
1. Chapter 1

_I can't breathe._  
That is my first thought.  
I can't think.  
Which is why I do not acknowledge it.  
I can't move.  
I am completely frozen. Time is at a stand still.

Running.  
Always have I been running.  
From my past. From my present.  
From my future.  
But most always my past, containing his shadow, his marks, his ties.  
Where he haunts me. When I am with him.  
To when he was torn away from me, blood staining his shirt.  
When my world crumbled at its foundation, finally being glued back together, piece by piece, by another's hand, reconstructed by another's words, loved again by another's heart.  
Now it quakes, the fractions tearing off from their forces, slowly turning to dust... and something in me shatters.  
I choke.  
_No,_ I think, my mind functioning only for these thoughts that tormented me. _He's dead. He is dead. I saw it. I. was. there._  
This is not Alex. This is not _my_Alex. It can't be. My Alex is dead. He was gone the moment I jumped that fence. I can't keep running from him. He is no longer mine.

This Alex does not look much different. He looks pained,-no, agonized. His eyes are hard, no longer the molten irisis I used to know, but glazed with a stone-like material, impenterable. His armor. A part of my old self thinks to comfort him, to tell him everything will be alright. But how does one comfort a ghost?

"Lena?" Julian asks. He is behind me but I still can't speak.  
So many months. So many dreams. And when I thought the worst was over? This is the most sever hallucination yet.

Will his ties that bind me ever be cut?

Sudden fury fills me. I do not know why or where it is derived from but it is a steady flow of fire that pulses through my veins, setting everything in a scorching haze. Why must he keep doing this to me? "You're dead," I say, first unable to speak now my voice savagely venomous. I'm surprised. I have never been capable of this level of ferocity before.

The ghost looks me hard in the eyes, cool pools of electric pain, shock, and anger. Yes, I can definitely see anger. Good, this makes it easier. "Sorry to disappoint." He snaps.

Flames lick at my heart, heated over a newly stoked bonfire. "You're DEAD!" I yell a little more forcefully. How can a ghost not know he no longer exists? "You _DIED!_ I _saw it!_I saw the blood! You could not have survived." I spit out each word as if they are vile and putrid to the tongue. "You are not real," I say with as much conviction as I can muster. "I'm cannot torment me anymore."

I get louder and louder, every emotion, every tear, every prickle of pain I have felt towards Alex lets loose in an attempt to make him disappear into nothingness, back to my memory, back in the cage I have locked him in with everything else for so long, to the point of acceptance.

"Leave me alone. You are not real," I repeat. "You are not even _here_!"

"Lena!" Julian again. He sounds concerned.  
I would be, too if I saw someone I cared for yelling at a ghost to leave her alone.

I feel a tug on my arm but I pull it back. Ghost-Alex's aura seems dimmer. Some anger is gone, but not quite. "This is _me_, Lena."  
By this point, I am fueled by pain, by the memories, everything crashing down on me, suffocating, drowning me in its sea of despair.

"He _left_me behind. Why can't you just let me be happy?"

I know it is not his fault. I know he wanted me to live. But in those moments, in those weeks, in those months, I had felt completely abandoned. No one could help me. Not even myself.  
But now? _Now?_When I finally have accepted it and have moved on with someone else who holds my heart?

"He is dead. You are dead. A part of me died with him. Take that and toy with it! Please." My voice falters and I am begging now. I cannot get the image of him over that metal inter-linking fence, telling me to run, to be free, without him. For him, out of my mind. A fresh reminder. So this is the punishment for falling in love again.

"Please." It comes out as a choke. The fire inside me is gone, deminished by the tears that threaten to blind me. He is dead. He cannot be real. He cannot be. He cannot be.

The ghost walks up to me and grabs my hand, places it over his heart. I did not know you could touch a ghost.

"Feel that?" he asks. I feel something, a steady beating, indicating life, but pounding a pumpful of lies into my listening ears. "I am alive, Lena. I am not dead."

A part of me is aware of Julian, standing away, completely confused and probably lost.  
But I am beyond his reach right now.

"The-they killed him," I say, although my tone doesn't hold as much conviction to it. I try again. "He's gone. Alex is cannot come back for me. He cannot _help_me. Someone else already has."

"Lena, I. Am. Alex."-I flinch-"I can tell you how I met you. I can tell you about the Mayor statue that holds our notes. I can tell you about the time a dog bit you. I know you still have the scar."

Pain drills through me, devouring me from the inside out, threatening to kill me. To sink me. He isn't real.

Is

...not

...Real.

"Stop," I say. He doesn't. "I can tell you about the Wilds when we watched the stars. I can tell you about the poetry I read to you as you visited my home. I can tell you"-

-"Please stop."

-"about Grace"- his voice takes on a desperate tone- "About your aunt. About your mother who broke from the Crypts. Who crawled through the O in LOVE."

"STOP!" I scream, snatching away my hand and stepping back. "You _can't_do this to me again."

A crease between his eyebrows appears, the one I know from so many different memories, places, causes. He draws out his words slowly, each as potent as the first. "You know I am real. You know I am alive." His eyes bore into my own. "I am _breathing_, Magdelena. He is not dead. I am not dead. I am right in front of you. Please, I know you know that I am really here, alive."

Something clicks inside of me and I do. I know he is not dead. I know ghosts cannot be touched. I know spirits cannot have heartbeats. I know dreams could have no beginning.

So I turn, away from him, away from Julian, and I do what I always do. What I have been doing. What I have always done. I run.  
From my past. From my present.  
From my future.  
But now I run because all three are chasing me. Chasing me. Chasing me. They do not stop and I do not stop.  
I.

...Just.

...keep.

...running.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't know where I am going, just as long as it is _away _where I am headed. I hear Alex and Julien call my name but I am lost to them for the time being. The past has won the chase.

Alex has been raised from the dead. He is alive. He is here. That single word has destoryed everything that has worked to make me whole again.

_Alive. _

Breathing.

What does he expect me to do about it? Does he feel betrayed that I have feelings for another person? _Have _I bretrayed him?

My mind spins uncontrollably as I run, not caring if I am seen. It is no longer my main concern. But then trees are smearing by me, looming over me, making me feel even more trapped. The earthy smell is no longer a comfort.

My head continues to play and replay Alex's death, cornered on the other side of that fence, drenched in his own blood. Had he been taken to the Crypts? Had he somehow managed to escape them like my Mom? The thought of Alex being thrown in that awful, putrid place is enough to make me feel sick.

My eyes are blurring and it is then when I am forced to clear them so I don't run into anything, that I realize that I am crying. Have been crying. I am supposed to be someone who has been made into a fighter. Who has been taught to be strong. And now I feel as if my heart has literally broken in half. It is one thing to think that the person you love is dead, but it is another just to have them re-enter your life at the same time you accept that they are gone. That they have left you. Forever.

I have been imaginging running to Alex for months in the Wilds, begging for it to be true, almost believing it, myself. And now it is all I can do to get away from him. From Julien. From everything. I don't know what I am going to do.

Do I still love Alex? That had been permanently etched into my heart that no one-not even Julien-can ever paint over.

But does Alex still love me? Has he been looking for me? Trying to find me?

Well he found me, entertwined in someone else's arms.

Abruptly, I make the horrible mistake of twisting perspectives, trying to imagine what I would be feeling if Alex had thought I was dead and I returned just to see him lip-locked with another girl.

The thought brings more tears to me eyes and I cry harder.

By this point, my breathing is ragged and broken, every cell in my body screaming at me to stop. I go as far as I can possibly go, finally collapsing on the ground, sucking in lung-fulls of air. For the first time in a while, I have no idea what to do. I am completely lost, as if someone has just dropped me in a labyrinth and demanded I find my way out before my time's up. I want to scream, but I settle on glaring at a tree and the memories a single, stupid trunk can bring to mind;

Walking through the forest with Alex as he showed me the Wilds for the first time and the refugee camp. Leaving him behind, on the opposite side of the fence. Running for months after, trying to find him again, as if the Wilds were a heaven that he resided inside of.

Even the insufferable ground brought back the memory of us lying in our small, private shack, kissing. The trace of his lips still seemed to linger against my own.

Everything I know has been linked to Alex. He taught me a new life, a new way, a new _feeling _that I was ready to give up. My life hadn't seemed to really begin until he had entered it. And then it ended after I thought he had died. The Julien came and he helped to start it up again, kind of like an electric shock to the heart. And I love him for that.

But my world has been crafted and held by a certain rough pair of hands, and when I left him behind that gate, it had fallen and splintered on the ground.

Alex. Alex. Alex. His ties to me are bound everywhere. To every tree, every treasured creek, every star in the sky. It doesn't matter where it is at. What matters is that anywhere I go, Alex is alwas there. In a memory, in a thought, in a _feeling. _He taught me about love. If he started that, isn't my love for him placed in every small thing I do? In my feelings for Julien? In every_one_ I love?

It is not something I can just let go of. I can only accept what I thought was, but now everything has been flipped upside down. He is here. I am here. Do I not owe him for everything he has done? The lengths he has gone to just to keep me safe?

But then there is Julien. I don't want to cause him any pain. Any hurt. I can't even be sure if Alex still wants me. If he is still _my_ Alex.

The man I saw was hard. Rugged. Shielded. How much have the Crypts changed him?

"Lena!" I hear someone call for me.

_Alex. _

a little ways from me, stopping in his tracks. Yes, he is still the shielded boy who has taken up residence along with my Alex, but that didn't make him any less mine. I can see it has made him stronger. Shaped him into a warrior.

And finally, after all my running to him, _for _him, . . . .

He has finally found me.


End file.
